Sur le plan supranational en Afrique, le droit de la concurrence est visé par les systèmes d’intégration existants ou émergents comme ceux de l’UEMOA en Afrique de l’Ouest et de la CEMAC en Afrique centrale. Par contre, jusqu’à l’heure actuelle, l’Organisation pour l’Harmonisation en Afrique du Droit des Affaires (OHADA) ne s’occupe pas du droit de la concurrence, ce qui pose la question de savoir si l’OHADA devrait avoir un rôle à jouer dans ce domaine. Le présent article aborde cette question dans une perspective européenne, en analysant l’approche de l’Union européenne en matière d’harmonisation du droit de la concurrence de ses États membres. En particulier, cette analyse met en relief les particularités du droit de la concurrence par rapport à d’autres matières du droit des affaires. Ces particularités peuvent expliquer les raisons pour lesquelles l’UE, jusqu’à maintenant, n’a pas harmonisé le droit de la concurrence dans les États membres. Mais la nécessité d’appliquer le droit de l’Union d’une manière décentralisée et les règles procédurales qui en résultent ont abouti à une harmonisation « souple » des droits nationaux. Pour l’OHADA, l’expérience européenne explique que la création d’une loi uniforme, en conformité avec l’approche traditionnelle de l’OHADA, ou la création d’un droit de la concurrence supranational de l’OHADA, qui s’ajouterait aux systèmes existants, ne produiraient guère des réponses adéquates. Par contre, l’article propose la création d’une politique concurrentielle pour l’Afrique, basée sur des recommandations ou des lignes directrices non contraignantes, qui pourraient être appliquées par les autorités nationales et supranationales existantes ou émergentes en Afrique subsaharienne. De même, il fait l’analyse critique de la politique de l’UE envers les pays en développement qui, dans le cadre des négociations pour des accords de partenariat économique (APE), pourrait facilement mener à un « regroupement géographique » des systèmes d’intégration économique en Afrique. Par conséquent, l’Europe ferait mieux de promouvoir l’idée d’un centre de politique de la concurrence africain qui, en formulant des recommandations ou des lignes directrices relatives à la politique de la concurrence pour l’Afrique, contribuerait davantage au développement durable des économies africaines et à leur intégration dans l’économie mondialisée.
EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES OF COMPETITION LAW IN THE OHADA REGION OHADA, the Organisationfor the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa, has a long tradition in drafting uniform business laws for the French speaking countries of West and Central Africa. However, OHADA has sofar not addressed the topic of competition law, although several regional economic integration systems in Africa have already supranational competition law in place, such as the competition law of the French speaking West African Monetary and Economic Union (WAEMU), or are about to draft and implement such laws. This article discusses what role OHADA could play in the future in the field of competition law. It thereby adopts a European perspective by relying on the experience of the European Union regarding harmonization of the domestic competition law of its Members States. As a basis for the analysis, the article first describes the advantages of having competition law for African states in general. It identifies a dual, economic and political, function of competition law. First, it helps to increase efficiency of the African domestic economies and to protect these economies against restraints of competition initiated in particular by multinational firms. Second, competition policy should be part of a policy package of good governance that addresses problems of corruption and bid rigging in particular. The needfor and the advantages deriving from competition law as well as the institutional challenges are illustrated by a discussion of the Tanzanian beer case, which was dealt with by the Tanzanian Fair Trade Commission, but which would also have been a candidate for the new regional competition law of the East African Community. In the framework of the substantive analysis, the article first explains that the EU and OHADA apply different concepts of harmonization. Whilst the EU uses the term with regard to the approximation of domestic laws, OHADA adopts uniform laws directly applicable in its Member States. Here, it may be surprising the the EU has never obliged its Member States to harmonize their national competition laws. Yet, in the framework of Regulation 1/2003, EU law has set up a decentralized procedural system that integrates the national authorities and courts for enforcing EU competition law. It is this procedural approach that has most recently accelerated a process of autonomous harmonization of domestic competition laws with the EU standards. The article explains the reasons for this kind of “soft” harmonization against the background of the decisions of the German legislature in reaction to the adoption of Regulation 1/2003. Then, the article discusses different options for OHADA to deal with competition law in the future. Thereby, it rejects the classical approach of drafting a uniform competition law applicable in all OHADA Member States, the adoption of a supranational OHADA competition law, which would also include the creation of an OHADA competition authority as well as the approximation of the domestic competition laws of the Member States. Rather, it proposes an approach of “soft harmonisation” This approach would consist in the development of non binding recommendations on competition policy issues, which could be followed by any, domestic or regional, competition authority and would take into account the specific socio-economic situation as well as the need for sustainable development and for integrating the sub-Saharan countries in the world economy. Finally, the article criticizes the current EU policy of exporting competition law in the framework of its negotiations of Economic Partnership Agreements with the developing countries in particular. Instead of promoting regional competition law, which might easily involve “regional reorganisation”, the article recommends the EU to support the creation of an African competition policy centre that would be able to work on policy guidelines in view of developing an African competition policy. Whether, however, the financing of such a centre should come from the EU and whether this centre should be established as part of the OHADA institutional framework are purely secondary questions.
